The present disclosure relates generally to media streaming services and in particular to facilitating social interaction via a media streaming service.
People love to consume media. With the advance of technology, a great deal of media content (including songs, albums, videos, books, etc.) is now available in digital form. By interacting with online services, consumers can purchase digital media content items, typically in the form of computer-readable data files containing a representation of media content that the consumers' electronic devices can use to render tangible outputs such as images and/or sounds (referred to as playing the content). More recently, the advent of broadband Internet connectivity has led to the development of “streaming” media services that can provide media content items to users' devices on a temporary basis, often in real time (i.e., the rate of data delivery to the user's device can keep up with the rate at which the user's device renders tangible outputs from the data). In general, a “streamed” media content item either is not stored on the user device or is stored only briefly, e.g., in a buffer, to support rendering operations on the user's device. This can allow users to consume media content without being limited by the storage capacity of their devices, often at lower cost than purchasing content items. Some streaming media services may also allow users to temporarily download media content items for offline consumption and/or to purchase media content items for long-term storage on the users' devices.